The dingo it seems had an accomplice in driving the Tasmanian "tiger" off mainland Australia - human hunters. There appears little doubt the famous feral dog out-competed the tiger for food and helped push it back to its final island habitat 3,000 years ago. But researchers say changes in Aboriginal land use, population size and technology taking place at the same time would also have affected numbers. The species finally became extinct in 1936 when the last tiger died in a zoo. "On the evidence, juries have always convicted the dingo, but it is a largely circumstantial case," said Dr Stephen Wroe, from the University of Sydney, New South Wales. "You can make just as good a circumstantial case for human involvement," he told BBC News Online. Taken at face value, the evidence against the dingo (Canis lupus dingo) is certainly persuasive. The dog arrived on mainland Australia little more than 4,500 years ago and spread rapidly across the continent - only failing to reach Tasmania because rising sea levels had inundated the Bass Strait some 6,000 years earlier.

This march across Australia is matched by the retreat of the tiger (Thylacinus cynocephalus) to its last island refuge. It has to be more than just coincidence, many believe. "The dictum historically has been that the dingo competed with the thylacine for resources - for some foods - and may have brought disease," said Dr Wroe, who has reassessed the evidence for the tiger's demise with colleague Chris Johnson, of James Cook University, Queensland.

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